The standard reference for how we talk · sourced, dated, attributed
Black’s Dictionary
The recklessness of the block, held to the rigor of the archive — the record where the language keeps its name, its origin, and its lineage.
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9,412 entries◆1,204 keepers◆38,900 citations◆96% avg. consensus
A position of the archive
Not slang, not broken. Our language.
Our language has its own grammar, its own sound, its own lineage — as distinct from mainstream American English as American English is from the Queen’s. Being different has never made it less. What other dictionaries file as “informal” or “non-standard,” this record keeps as what it is: how we talk — whole, historied, and ours.
It has rules
Consistent grammar — the habitual be, the future marker finna — patterns, not errors.
It has history
Carried through the South, the church, the block — and every generation that kept it alive.
It’s ours
We don’t need it validated to know what it is. It’s how we talk — and always has been.
Setting the Record StraightNot Gen Z · on the record decades earlier
The Claim
“A TikTok / Gen Z word, coined around 2020.”
False
The Record
Black Southern speech, from bust. On the record decades before the app existed — attested in Southern rap and everyday talk through the 1990s.
Unrecorded · open claims
Be the first to submit.
Heard in the wild, not yet on the record. The first to submit takes the credit — and locks the origin in before it is lost to another generation or translation.